You

  But you do.

  You tricked me, you cunt. You latch on to my ankle and pull and I fall over and I drop your Da Vinci Code and land on my side and it hurts goddamn it and you kick me in the dick and that hurts goddamn it. You are not gone, forever and you are possessed and out of words and my groin aches and my side pounds and you are not my savior, you make things worse. You are alive, underhanded, kicking me when I’m down and I scream in agony and you are toxic and Satanic because just a minute ago:

  “You were dead, you fucking bitch.”

  You say nothing. You kick. But I’m nontoxic and I’m bigger and braver and God gives me the strength to recover from your nasty blows. I swat your legs and now you collapse, flat on your back. I mount you. You try to bite me but you can’t and you try to kick me but you can’t and you try to claw me but your wrists are locked in my hands. You can’t do anything with me pinning you down. You spit at my face; you are a Masshole. And you are weaker now and I let go of your arms and wrap my hands around your neck for real this time. You try to hit me but your little fists aren’t what they once were. The bad in you outweighs the good and your cheeks turn white and my cock throbs in pain and my hipbone pulsates and your eyes bulge. You’re disgusting. My mother’s Nirvana T-shirt that I was wearing the day you stalked me to my house, the one I’ve held on to my whole life, it’s a mess of cum and vanilla. You have torn it beyond repair, you bitch.

  “You were right, Beck,” I say to you. “You kill people. You do.”

  I squeeze your neck and I thank you for kicking me in the dick, and I try to blink your saliva out of my eyelashes. I thank you for proving beyond a reasonable doubt that you are bad. You do not want love or life and we never had a chance and you are commonplace and raw, gasping and gurgling. Solipsistic with your fudgy inconsiderate fingerprints ruining my books, my heart, my life.

  “What’s that, Beck?”

  You have one word left in you: “Help.”

  And I do help you. I take my right hand and reach for your Da Vinci Code. I shove the book into my mouth and bite a few pages. I yank the book away and I toss it and grab the torn pages out of my mouth, wet with my saliva that you wanted so badly.

  My last words to you: “Open up, Guinevere.”

  I shove the pages into your mouth and your pupils slip around and your back arches. This is the sound of you dying. There are bones cracking—where, I do not know—and tear ducts in emergency mode—the tear of death seeps out of your left eye and onto your porcelain cheek and your eyes are fixated on somewhere I have never traveled, gladly beyond any experience; your eyes have their silence. You are no better than a doll now and you do not react as the pages in your mouth take the blood that rises from your gullet.

  And all at once I miss you and you missed me and I call to you and I seize your tiny shoulders.

  You don’t respond. You are as flawed as all the books in the store; you have ended and left me and you are gone, forever. You will never leave me in the dark ever again and I will never wait for a response from you ever again. Your light is out for good now and I take you in my arms.

  No.

  I want to throw myself in front of engine engine number nine. How could I have done this? I never made you pancakes. What the fuck is wrong with me? I can’t breathe and you are my sweet lord, Beck, different, hot. You are. Were.

  I cry.

  52

  AT the end of your days, you claimed that you weren’t a writer. But I think you would appreciate the poetic symmetry regarding your burial. It was a long, lonely drive upstate, more than four hours outside of the city. It was tough going in the Buick, with you in the trunk with your green pillow, silent as Little Compton in the winter. I drove past Nicky’s Pizza and I kept going and I found this diner. Nicky’s and his brother’s extra homes are nestled in nearby Forrest Lake, a private area just outside of Chestertown. This is a pure township, Beck, old-fashioned and pleasantly anchored to an antiquated way of life. I eat a grilled cheese sandwich because I have to, because burying you in the cold forest will be demanding, even though everyone who comes into the diner can’t resist remarking on the mild winter. So mild, I wouldn’t need a red Holden Caulfield hunting cap from Macy’s even if I still had one. I will not cry. Not here.

  Most in the diner are local, and those who aren’t local have driven in for a car show. The waitress asks me if I’m here for the car show and I say that I am and I check my phone and I have to go to the bathroom again, because every time I check my phone, it’s like you die all over again. Nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands and I cry, quietly, so as not to attract attention. Your death is a song on repeat and I splash cold water on my face and try not to think about the fact that I will never hear from you ever again. I won’t, Beck. You are dead.

  I know that Nicky is not stupid. He wouldn’t bury you on his own property. But he would drive into the nearby woods off Forrest Lake Drive, as I do now an hour after sunset. I see a pink-and-white sign. There is an event, “Chet and Rose’s Wedding” is happening tonight at the camp at the end of the road. But I will not be deterred. I veer off-road into the blackness that’s purer than the beaches of LC and darker than the depths of your solipsistic soul. There is no ocean here to soften the starless blow of eternity. I brake, slowly. Chet and Rose are the ones with bad timing, not me, damn it.

  The night is so empty that I can hear the wedding when I shut off the Buick. I strap on my night vision goggles and grab my shovel and step out into the darkness. I try not to listen to the wedding as I shovel. But it’s hard. Chet and Rose take their first dance—Clapton’s “Wonderful Tonight”—as their friends and family clap. I wonder what our wedding song would have been and I ask you but you don’t answer. You are dead.

  I dig. I have never been and will never be as alone as I am while I dig. Upstate New York clings to the cold like no other place. Only here would I have to listen to Eric Clapton shut off lights and praise his loyal, beautiful, girlfriend as I, alone, sweat and shiver and prepare to put you into the dirt. Life goes on, so literally, and I stab my shovel in the bitter earth. I bend over to catch my breath. I look over at you, wrapped up in a wooly blanket from Bed Bath & Beyond, silenced in the open trunk. I am breathing normally now and the revelers are doing the Electric Slide and would we have had a wedding like this? I suppose it would have been on Nantucket because you’re the one with a family. I would have invited Ethan and Blythe and Mr. Mooney. Mr. Mooney wouldn’t have come. But he would have transferred the title of the shop to you and me. I know it. I want the wedding to stop and I would like to scream at the top of my lungs but I don’t want to alarm you. But I can’t alarm you. You are dead.

  I dig and the party goes on. There are toasts and cheers and Stevie Wonder sings about his precious daughter—Isn’t she lovely made from love?—and we’ll never have a daughter and I lose my temper and throw my shovel. I crawl into the earth and let the music beat the living fuck out of me. I can’t fight it anymore and joy at the far end of the woods has become monotonous—I’m not one of those people who ever thought “Get Lucky” was so fucking special. I can almost taste their vodka and I am the uninvited guest, out of sight, alone. What soothes me, what allows me to keep digging, is the likelihood that Chet and Rose have a website, a registry. Knowing that I will be able to find them, to see them, is a comfort somehow. Neil Young sings for Chet and Rose—“Harvest Moon” that hurts—and Neil Young will never play for you and me on our wedding day and you don’t hear him now. You are dead.

  I lift your body out of the trunk and unravel the area rug that encapsulates you. You are still beautiful and I rest my head on your chest and tell you about Chet and Rose. I will probably die alone, under an insignificant moon and you won’t be there to mourn. You soar on to heaven and I have to summon the strength to set your precious corpse in the ground. Chet and Rose are surrounded by friends and family but I, alone, lift your petite body and maketh you to lie down in green pastures. It would be nice to have a moment of
silence; Chet and Rose are rude to be so loud. But I can’t blame them; they can’t see me, can’t hear me. They’re in their own world, where good things happen, a quarter mile and a million light years away. I kneel on the ground and recite the 23rd Psalm. I memorized it for this occasion. You are dead.

  There is no way to know what happens to us after the wedding we won’t have, after life. I walk in the woods and look at the world with inhuman night vision and see all that man was not built to see. I don’t know if you will dwell in the house of the lord forever but I lie on my back and listen to the party for Chet and Rose grow as quiet as the night, as death. They will get tired and their party will end and if anyone was ever going to live eternally in the light, I think it would be you.

  I cover you with dirt and rocks and branches and leaves and you are so much more than a body. The walk back to my car is a short one. The drive away from Chet and Rose and your body is a long one in the dark of night. I don’t know that I’ll ever make it home, and even when I do make it into my apartment, I remain unsure of whether or not I will ever have a true home. I will never have you. You are buried by Forrest Lake, near Chet and Rose, somewhere I have never traveled, gladly beyond any experience.

  I don’t open the shop the next day. I can’t. You are dead.

  53

  THE mail I typically receive is boring and financial, bills, coupons, crap. But today, almost three months after your passing, I receive the first wedding invitation of my life, via the United States Postal Service. The envelope is so big the postman had to walk it upstairs and lean it against my door. I know I’m not an expert, but it’s a beauty, Beck, and I have it with me here at the shop. I’m enamored with the triumphant romance of the thick, embossed cardstock juxtaposed with the delicate, gold, italicized cursive. Who knew Ethan and Blythe were royalty? A lot happens in three months. Exclamation Point Ethan and Blythe have gotten engaged and invited me to their wedding in Austin, Texas. A lot doesn’t happen in three months. The HELP WANTED sign is still in the window; Ethan got a corporate job, marriage is expensive.

  But, this invitation has altered my perspective. I haven’t felt this hopeful since exiting Dr. Nicky’s office, since entering you. The future exists again because of this invitation. This invitation necessitates that I mark dates on my calendar. And it feels good to flip ahead through the calendar in my phone. Before this invitation arrived—addressed to Mr. Joe Goldberg and Guest!—I was only flipping through months gone by, inventing anniversaries for our life that’s gone. You above all others know the importance of moving on; you like new things, you liked new things. Life is not a Dan Brown book; you are dead and you are not coming back. But life is better than a Dan Brown book because at long last, I have something to look forward to, a wedding. I have to decide between steak and fish and I am genuinely torn about the decision and I have to make this decision within the next forty-one days, according to the rules on the reply card.

  The bell chimes on this slow day that’s neither summer nor fall. An unremarkable man in shorts asks about Doctor Sleep. I point him to Fiction G–K and I think of the time I saw you in Fiction F–K and what a fool I was in the days after. I have rearranged the shop; I couldn’t look at F–K anymore. I genuinely believed that reshaping the shelves would make it easier to live in the world without you, the world I built with my own two hands, the world that won’t allow me to tell you that I know you stole your Ritz robes from Peach. I still get flashbacks. I still cringe. I am eating again, but only because I hate fainting. Everything has been an exercise until now. I will always feel indebted to the United States Postal Service, to Ethan, to Blythe. And I will never again underestimate the power of anticipation. There is no better boost in the present than an invitation to the future.

  The loner buys the King and leaves with the King and I am going to need to buy a suit. It’s wonderful to have a project and I celebrate by visiting Chet and Rose’s online love nest. I feel like I’ve gotten to know them so well since that dreadful night in the woods. I want to tell them about the invitation. I’ve become obsessed with Chet and Rose, but how could I not? They gathered in the woods to be married so that I could still believe in love. I love them. I’ve watched their honeymoon slideshow hundreds of times. They were there for me. What timing. I used to play the slideshow and pretend that we’re the ones on a honeymoon in Cabo San Lucas. But these days I’m less bitter. I know that we all don’t get to be Chet and Rose. It is an indisputable fact: Some people on this earth receive love, get married, and honeymoon in Cabo. Others do not. Some people read alone on the sofa and some people read together, in bed. That’s life.

  I will probably die alone. Karen Minty will probably die married; lots of people love The King of Queens. And I am fine with my fate. It was my decision to spare you the pain of life. I let go of you. I forgive you. It’s not your fault that you carried your demons awkwardly in that big Prada bag, in those giant used robes from Peach’s Ritz. You were toxic, not vicious and the men who did leave you are thriving; that Hesher guy has a television show that doesn’t suck. An online registry at Babies “R” Us shows that your father is about to become a father, again. Some people get it all, they do.

  I think you would be happy to know that your voice carries. I am the sole reader of The Book of Beck. I had your short stories bound at FedEx. But millions of people have devoured the story of your life. Everyone knows about the twisted psychologist who murdered you. You never were published in the New Yorker but you did make the New York Post.

  You changed me, Beck. I will not grow lonely like Mr. Mooney. I have Ethan and Blythe. I have the girls they periodically foist upon me. The girls are always terrible, wan and patronizing or shallow and simple. I am like Hugh Grant in Love Actually minus the love, which isn’t so bad when you realize that in real life, Hugh Grant is single, like me. Once again, not all animals are destined to pair off. Yes, I understand that we are built for companionship; God gave us vocabularies. We need to speak. We need to listen. I fuck occasionally, girls from the Internet, girls from the shop. But mostly I keep to myself. No longer do I open petal by petal and you were right, Beck. You were not the girl I thought you were and Barbara Hershey wasn’t the one for Elliot in Hannah and Her Sisters. The doorbell chimes and I look up from a photo of Chet and Rose on paddleboards and see a girl, a girl I know, sort of. She wears a University of Pittsburgh tank top and jeans. She squirms. She waves. I wish there was music playing right now. She liked my music last time.

  “I saw the sign in the window.” She swallows. “Are you still hiring? Sometimes they forget to take down the sign. Sometimes it’s bullshit. I’m sorry. I’m swearing.”

  I forgot about the sign but I did not forget about Amy Adam and her stolen credit card and her fraudulent academic attire and her large chestnut eyes. We are still hiring. She comes over. She glances at my wedding invitation and nods. “I love Austin.”

  “So, how have you been?” I ask and it’s a silken maneuver on my part. I am the gentleman, assuming the role of the one who remembers so that she may be the lady, remembered. She fawns, almost curtsies. She is flattered and happy. She is staring at me and it feels good in her eyes and she hands me a résumé.

  “I used to work at a little bookstore in Williamsburg, but let’s just say that it didn’t work out because of their shortsighted policies about what they call stealing.” She grunts. “Like I shouldn’t bring books home and read them. And exactly how do you even read a book without marking it up?” She is loud. “Excuse me if I’m not one of these ultramodern Kindle people, but I like pens, paper, real pages I can rip and touch.” She shakes her head. “And if you bought a book and found notes in the margins, I mean who wouldn’t love that? It’s a bonus.” She doesn’t want me to answer. She blinks. “I’m sorry. I’m going off. But it has to be said.”

  She needs my acceptance. I smile. “No apology necessary.”

  Now it’s her turn and she complies, playful. “I probably sound like a lunatic. Do you guys hi
re lunatics?”

  I tell her that we only hire lunatics and she thinks I am funny. She has a lilting laugh and she likes it here with me. She will be my cashier and my girlfriend and the next time I’m invited to a wedding, it will be addressed to Joe Goldberg & Amy Adam and I won’t have to worry about finding a Guest. You are gone, forever and she is here, now.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I want to thank Joe Goldberg for demanding to be heard. Well done, Joe.

  And now, for the real people who brought this book to life. Thank you to everyone at Emily Bestler Books, Atria, and Simon & Schuster. I hit the editorial jackpot with Emily Bestler. Emily, I am so grateful for your enthusiasm, intelligence, and acute sensibilities. Also, don’t get stalked. Judith Curr, Ben Lee, Paul Olsewski, David Brown, Mellony Torres, Hillary Tisman, LeeAnna Woodcock, Jeanne Lee, Kristen Lemire, and Kate Cetrulo—thank you for making me feel so at home. Megan Reid, thank you for the world’s greatest valentines. Alloy, oh Alloy. Josh Bank, Lanie Davis, and Sara Shandler, your brains and hearts are perfect. Joe agrees. Josh, your voice is more potent than Karen Minty’s stick. Lanie, you always know best and I am so grateful for your direction (and your ladle!). Sara, you are so freaking articulate and you draw the best hearts. Thank you all for caring so deeply about the world in this book. Jennifer Rudolph Walsh, Claudia Ballard, and Laura Bonner at WME, thank you for believing in You and knowing what to do with it. Natalie Sousa, you read my mind when you designed this cover. Thanks for that.